Greta smiled at him.
"What has happened?" another would have demanded, on sight of Napier's
face; not Miss Greta. She paused on the step of the motor, calmly giving
the chauffeur directions about going back for the others. "Nice to see
you home again." She held out her hand to Napier.
He led the way into the hall.
"You look rather disturbed," she commented drily.
Disturbed, indeed! Who wouldn't at finding such a business shifted on
his shoulders? "We expected Sir William before this,"--Napier's
hesitation was only outward. Inwardly he was cursing with extreme
fluency. "The train service is horribly disorganized."
"Everything is disorganized," responded Miss Greta, drawing off her
glove. She caught sight of her telegram. The heavy, white fingers paused
in the act of opening it. A change, quick, subtle, came over her face.
"Some one has been tampering with this!" She spoke in a sudden, harsh
voice, Napier had never heard before. He was conscious that guilt was
printed large on his countenance.
"Yes, it's been tampered with." He in his turn spoke loud enough for the
words to reach Singleton.
"Hush!" said Miss Greta, to his astonishment. "Come--" she led the way
across the hall, toward the drawing-room.
"I must wait here, for Sir William," said Napier, lamely.
Miss Greta stood looking at him an instant, then she took the telegram
out of the envelope and glanced at it. After a moment's reflection she
folded it up, replaced it in the envelope, folded the envelope small,
and thrust it in her belt.
"You'd better tell me," she said in an undertone, "what has been going
on." As Napier hesitated, her growing uneasiness got the better of her.
"I'll ask Lady McIntyre." She went quickly toward the staircase.
"No, no, come back." He waited till she turned. "There's been some
one--some one was sent down from London to--look into things."
Wide and innocent, the china-blue eyes were on him. "To look into what
things?"
"Yours."
"Mine? What on earth for?" She smiled, divided, it would seem, between
diversion and stark bewilderment.
For a second, Napier forgot the man in the next room. "I'm afraid it's
all up, Miss Greta." He had never called her "Miss Greta" before, never
spoken so gently.
She came over to the table. "And why," she asked in a level voice, "do
you think _that_, Mr. Gavan?" She had never used his Christian name
before.
"They've found--what they were looking for."
"And what were they? Not"--she drew herself up suddenly--"not that
_that_ matters," she said with a towering contempt. "The thing that
_does_ matter isn't that in these terrible times _all_ foreigners are
suspect. The thing that matters is that Lady McIntyre and you--_you_
should allow strange people to--" Her quivering lips could form no more
for the moment. She pressed her handkerchief to her mouth. "Were you
present when they--"
He nodded.
"How you _could_!" From a great height she dropped contempt on him. And
she had scorn to spare for the men of the secret service. "They must be
easily satisfied! What do they think they have found in my poor solitary
trunk?"
It was perhaps better to go through with the odious business and get it
over. "They found your journal."
"What of that?"
"Transcripts of conversations at official dinners--"
"What of that? _Always_ I set down what interesting people say. Every
diarist has done that since diaries began. Nan does it. Your friend,
Julian Grant, does it. I've done it since I was twelve."
An effect of poise about her, a delicate effrontery in her tone, steeled
Napier to ask: "And have you also, since you were twelve, made a
practice of photographing fortifications?"
"_Fortifications!_ Oh, this is the very lunacy of suspicion!"
"There was also a tracing of the most important of our new coast
defenses."
"Tracing? What is tracing?" As Napier did not answer, she went on, "I
have never seen such a thing."
"No, you wouldn't see it, not till you had heated the paper."
"You mean,"--she gasped--"something in what they call invisible ink? Who
has put that among my papers?" The pink in her face had not so much
faded as deepened to a sickly bluish magenta, like the discoloration of
certain roses before the petals fall. Napier looked away. She stood
there, pouring her cautious, low-voiced scorn on some secret enemy. It
wasn't the first time in history this kind of villainy had been
practised on an innocent person, a person whom _some_body--who was
it?--(she clutched his arm)--whom somebody wanted to get into trouble,
to get out of the way. The congested face looked swollen and patchy.
Minute bubbles of saliva frothed at one corner of the mouth. Suddenly
she faced about and made a rush for the stairs. But Napier, at her
flying heels, caught her half-way up. He seized her by the shoulder, and
he did it roughly, anticipating a struggle.
Instantly she was still. She dropped her cheek against his ungentle
fingers. "Oh, Gavan, save me!"
[Illustration: "O Gavan, save me!"]
"It's too late." He drew his hand away. She turned to the friendlier
banister and clung there. "They have taken everything," he said very
low.
"Everything?"
"All the things you thought you had hidden."
"Hush!" She backed a step.
Napier, with the advantage of his inches, head and shoulders above her,
had caught sight of an unfamiliar figure sitting in the upper hall,
reading a newspaper. Grindley! Greta had not seen him, but she heard Sir
William's voice coming out of Lady McIntyre's bedroom, and Lady
McIntyre's raised in a sob: "William! William!--Need any one know?
Outside us three and the police?"
"I don't see the slightest necessity." Sir William came out and shut the
door.
He stood an instant ruffling up his hair and looking intensely
miserable. Greta von Schwarzenberg had backed down the stair.
Sir William descended slowly, Grindley behind him. It was Sir William
who started when he realized who was waiting there at the bottom. Napier
saw that a strong impulse to turn tail and leave this unpleasant
business had to be overcome. Sir William bustled on down. He passed Miss
Greta without a sign.
"Where's the other?" he demanded of Napier, and just then Mr. Singleton
strolled down the hall. Sir William nodded bruskly, and turned to the
motionless figure of the woman. "I--a--" (he felt for his seals) "I am
sorry to have to tell you that--a--that the police have convinced me you
had better leave here."
"And why," she said, "should I leave here?"
"Because it appears that you abuse our hospitality."
She threw back her head. "What appears yet more clearly is that people
_I_ have trusted have betrayed me." Over the prominent blue eyes the
lids drooped a little. "In my absence some one has laid a trap." She
turned to Napier, with a breath-taking sharpness. "Is it you?"
He met her gaze. "I warned them about Gull Island, and I--"
"Gull Island! What has Gull Island to do with me?"
"No, no," said Sir William. "I don't myself connect you with the Gull
Island business."
"Nor,"--she made a slight inclination that seemed to say she was not to
be outdone in chivalry--"nor do I need to be told that _you_, Sir
William, have no hand in this. _You_ weren't made for such work."
Sir William's rolling eye caught, as it were, upon some unexpected
support. It rested for one mollified moment.
"I haven't lived under your roof all these months," she went on, "under
the protection of your great name, without understanding _you_, even
though people you think your friends cruelly misunderstand me." The
voice caught; she carried her handkerchief to her shaking lips.
Singleton read signs in Sir William's countenance that made him anxious
to end the passage between the owner of the great protecting name and
the lady who invoked it. Singleton had joined Grindley, who stood
leaning against the wall behind Sir William. In an impatient undertone,
"Why didn't you tell him?" demanded Singleton.
"Did," Grindley answered. "Understood diary and tracing. Didn't give
himself time to take in the--" His hand came out of his side pocket with
a paper. Singleton plucked it away from him and carried it over to Sir
William. As it passed, Napier caught a glimpse of Miss Greta's
handwriting on a telegraph form bearing the post-office stamp.
"This was sent out from here at noon to-day." Singleton held the message
under Sir William's eyes.
"Well, what of it?" retorted Sir William. "A perfectly proper
instruction to a broker."
"Till it's been decoded. If you like, Mr. Napier can explain how
afterwards. What it means is:
"_Troopship leaves Southampton at seven to-night. Four
searchlights playing constantly over harbor. No convoy._"
There was a moment of deathlike silence. The woman stood as motionless
as the carved banister at her back.
"Gavan," Sir William cried out, "is it true?"
"It's true," he said.
"You say this information was sent--" The terror in the old man's face
evoked the shattered and shattering image of a torpedoed ship, a sea
full of drowning soldiers.
"We stopped it at the post-office."
Relieved of the crowning horror, Sir William shook off the paralysis
that had held his restlessness in a vice. He hurried half a dozen steps
up the hall and half a dozen down, jingling and muttering, "This--going
on in my house!" He drew up into a jerk as the woman darted forward and
planted herself in his way.
"Why not in your house?" she demanded wildly. "Haven't you a hand and
two sons in what's going on elsewhere? What are you doing to my brothers
and friends? Is it worse to be drowned than to have your head battered
to pulp? Than to have six inches of steel run through your stomach?
Wouldn't it make _you_ want to kill your enemies to see what I saw at
the Newton Hackett drill-ground--a bag stuffed with straw, hung up--and
hear the Staff Sergeant call it Fritz, and shout out, 'Now, men,
straight for his kidneys!'"
"Gavan!" Sir William's voice called hoarsely, "make an end of this!" He
went down the passage at the double, and shut himself in his private
room.
Less the woman's rigid lips than her eyes asked Singleton, "What--do
they--mean--to do?"
"You know what they do in a case of this kind in Germany?"
As if the men in front of her had been the firing-squad, each look a
bullet, she pitched forward. She would have dropped on her face, had
Napier not caught her. He shook her slightly by the arm.
"Here's Nan," he said under his breath, "I mean Miss--your friend and
Madge--" The noise outside pierced through the common preoccupation. The
motor was rushing up the avenue. Napier led the woman to a chair.
As she sat down, her head fell back against the wall. The face had a
dead look.
"We don't want her fainting," Napier said sharply, as Singleton leaned
over her.
"There is an excellent train," remarked the secret-service man, "that
leaves Fenchurch Street just about this time to-morrow."
She parted her shaking lips. "What has that--to do--with me?"
"You will be able to catch it."
"Shall I--shall I _really_?" She made a fruitless upward clutching at
his arm. Her hand fell back into her lap, as though lamed. "Oh, no! You
only want--_he_ wants"--she slid a look at Napier--"to get me out of
here without a scene. People's--feelings--must be spared. All--except
mine."
"He told me,"--Grindley's slow voice sounded, his eyes seemed to find
vacancy where another's would have found Sir William's door--"he told me
he didn't want to make it any worse for you than necessary!"
"Ah!" Something like life returned to the dead eyes. "Any worse, he
means, for himself."
Napier turned away in disgust.
"Your seat in the Pullman," said Singleton politely, "is Number
Sixteen."
"You don't m-mean they will let me go--_home_!"
"Yes; that's the kind of fools we are."
As the voice Napier's ears were straining for called out, "Greta!" Nan
came up the steps, leaning forward, as she ran, to see into the hall.
"Is that you, Gre--" She hung a second, framed there in the doorway,
with Madge behind her. "What _is_ it, dearest?" She flew to the figure
on the chair. She kneeled beside it. "Greta darling, you've had bad
news. Oh, what _is_ it, my dear?" She chafed the slack hand. She laid it
against her cheek. "Tell me, somebody!" she said, looking at Napier.
"Who are these strangers?"
By a heroic effort, Miss von Schwarzenberg produced a masterpiece.
"They--they are friends of mine," she said.
Singleton, after a faint smiling inclination in Miss Ellis's direction,
as though accepting the audacious description as an introduction, made
it good by saying to Miss von Schwarzenberg: "You understand then,
you're not to give yourself any trouble about tickets or accommodation.
We will see to all that, won't we, Grindley?"
Grindley made a consenting rumble in his throat, and withdrew with
Singleton to the front steps. They stood there conferring.
Napier waited on thorns to get a word with Nan. Was it impossible, was
it too late, to put her on her guard? She seemed to have no eyes for any
one but Greta. If Singleton had doubted the closeness of her relation to
that notorious character, what must he think now?
"Try to tell me, dearest, what has happened." Nan hung over the slack
form.
"Are you going somewhere, Miss Greta?" Madge pressed to the other side
of the chair. "_Where_ are you going?"
"And _why_?" Nan urged with a sharpness of concern. "You've had bad
news, my dearest, dearest."
"Yes." Greta remembered the telegram. She took the message out and half
opened it. The paper was now folded in halves, instead of in quarters.
Nan watched eagerly the fingers, which seemed to forget to open the
telegram to her friend's eye.
"Poor father!" Miss Greta brought out the words in a tone so exquisitely
gentle that Napier studied her face an instant.
He was sure that, as she sat there with that look of sorrow, absently
tearing the telegram across, she was thinking lucidly and rapidly what
her next move should be.
"Is it that your father is ill, dear?" Nan pressed closer to her side.
Greta nodded. Speechless with emotion, she tore the facing halves of the
telegram to ribbons, the ribbons to fragments, all with the air, as it
struck Napier, of the _fille noble_ of the theater.
"Dear, I'm terribly sorry!" Nan took her hand. "But you mustn't think it
is as serious as all that. Unless--what did it say?"
Greta looked down at her hands as though expecting to be able to hand
the telegram over to speak for itself, only to find it, to her
surprise, reduced to the fineness of stage snow.
"He has been telegraphing me for days to come home. I didn't realize it
meant--_this_!"
"Perhaps it's not so bad as you think. Let us send them a message, reply
paid. And you'll see. The news will be better."
Miss Greta shook her head. "I have put it off too long already," she
said faintly. "There is the slenderest chance of my finding him alive."
Suddenly she pressed her handkerchief to her lips.
"Darling Greta, _do, do_ let me telegraph!"
Miss von Schwarzenberg drew herself up. She rose. She stood like the
heroine in Act III. "I am a soldier's daughter. I obey." She went toward
the stairs.